


Mourning/Fading

by HaroThar



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Forgotten character, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sex, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Past Abuse, Sadstuck, forget
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-30 01:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12643440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaroThar/pseuds/HaroThar
Summary: Vriska dies.Equius and Terezi become the only people who remember she existed in the first place.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in, like, a day. I also didn't edit anything so there are probably mistakes.

CT: --> Vriska is dead

CT: --> I thought you should know

CT: --> It is my understanding that the two of you were

CT: --> Close

**centaursTesticle [CT] ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]**


	2. Chapter 2

Terezi lied on the loungeplank wearing only her bra, kept warm by sharing body heat with someone cooler than herself. Long dark hair cascaded over her chest and she toyed with it idly, enjoying the smell of cooling slurry in the bucket down on the floor and the taste of bubblegum blood.

“We play rough, don’t we lover?” Feferi asked smugly, licking teal from her own lips as her freckled fingers brushed along the line of lovebites she’d left.

Terezi’s bloodpusher twinged and her afterglow faded three shades. She wrapped her arms around Feferi’s entirely naked torso, pressing her face into the shoulder she’d left her own marks on.

“Terezi?” Feferi asked in innocent confusion, hugging Terezi back on reflex.

“Not as rough as some,” she said.

“Whale… I mean, it’s not pike we’re kismesises,” Feferi said, but it only made Terezi cling tighter. “Terezi, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“I just miss her sometimes,” Terezi admitted quietly.

“Miss who?”

Terezi tensed as though struck. “Vriska,” she said sharply, not in a mood for jokes about this.

Feferi sat up and Terezi reluctantly let her pull away, smelling confusion.

“Flushed heart,” Feferi said softly, “who?”

Terezi’s face curled up in confusion, mirroring Feferi’s expression back at her, and then Terezi snarled.

“Feferi, that isn’t funny.”

“I’m not trying to be finny, dragonfish, I don’t know who you’re talking a-boat.”

“Vriska! My kismesis! Arachnidsgrip?” Terezi half shouted, elbowing her way half upright on the loungeplank underneath Feferi.

“Dragonfish, you don’t… _have_ a kismesis…”

“Yeah, cause she’s dead!” Terezi shouted loudly, lurching off the couch and nearly upending the bucket.

“Terezi- hey-!” Feferi followed after her in concern, her long hair cascading down to her hips.

“Listen, I know you never really liked her much but don’t you think pretending to forget her after only a _perigee_ is a _little_ distasteful?” Terezi asked angrily as she shoved her foot into the wrong leg of her pants. “Especially to _me?”_

“Terezi,” Feferi said, a little louder, her hands held out placatingly, “I have _no_ idea who or what you’re carping about!”

Terezi hiss-screeched at her, yanking her pants back off so she could spin them around and hoist them on properly.

“Terezi, sweetheart, dragonfish, you need to clam down. Do you want me to call Sollux for you?”

“Actually-” Terezi pulled out her phone, abandoning her shirt for the moment. “-why don’t I just show you Vriska’s handle, since you’re so _forgetful!”_ she hissed.

Then she froze where she stood, scrolling through her contact list again, then a third time, licking her phone screen in case she’d missed it somehow.

“Dragonfish?”

The chatlog was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

AT: wHO?

_______________

TA: doe2n’t riing any bell2

_______________

CA: the name sounds somewwhat familiar but i couldn’t tell you wwhere i knoww it from

_______________

GA: I Cannot Quite Recall. Someone I Met Only Briefly Once?

GA: Or A Friend Of Yours You’ve Yet To Introduce Me To?

_______________

AC: :??< *ac doesn’t know mew that is*

_______________

AA: wh0?

_______________

CG: THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN

CG: NO I DO NOT FUCKING REMEMBER SOMEONE NAMED VRISKA

_______________

TC: SoRrY sIs

TC: I kNoW i GoT hOlEs Up In My PaN bUt ThAt DoN’t SpArK nO rEcOlLeCtIoN iN mE

_______________

CC: Oh sweetheart it’s ocray! 

CC: I forgive you <3

CC: Are you feeling betta now?

CC: You were pretty DISTR-ESS-ED! 38(

GC: 1’V3 C4LM3D DOWN

GC: TH4NKS FOR B31NG SO P4T13NT W1TH M3

CC: Of course!

CC: Take it easy, ocray darling?

CC: <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 

GC: 1 H4VE N3V3R T4K3N 4NYTH1NG 34SY 4 N1GHT 1N MY L1F3 4ND YOU KNOW 1T

GC: <3

_______________

Her hive was still there, down in the old, dried up riverbed. The sight was almost enough to move Terezi to tears- she wasn’t crazy.

Everything was exactly as it had been the night after her death. Or, at least, the night after Equius had told Terezi of her death. The cerulean stains and broken objects, the signs of struggle and ruined 8 balls. Her lusus was still there too, much less noisy and much more dead than she had been a perigee ago. Too heavy to leave the valley, and without her nymph feeding her, she’d starved. Good riddance.

Up, Terezi went, to the hive perched on a precipice. She moved to ring the doorgrub, but remembered how Vriska never would, she’d just barge into her “fussy neigh8or’s” hive and do whatever she wanted.

The door wasn’t even locked. Terezi had never been in Equius’s hive before, but it wasn’t hard to follow her nose towards the block that stank the most of sweat. His back was turned when she opened the door, and she watched him move slowly, first sitting up from whatever project he was stooped over, then turning like he didn’t quite believe it. Whatever his expression was when he saw her, Terezi wasn’t close enough to smell.

“Do you remember someone named Vriska?” 

He nodded.

Relief was so immediate Terezi might have cried. “Then you’re the only other troll who does.”

“I see. You would like to talk about it, I presume?”

Terezi gave a single, mirthless little breath of a laugh, more a huff than anything. “Sure, yeah, that would be nice.”

Equius stood and waded past various robot parts. “Then let’s adjourn somewhere cleaner. I have a study.”

That he did. He also had a lusus that brought them tea. Equius held his silently, staring at Terezi in that way of his.

“I guess you’re waiting for me to start?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Don’t you miss her?”

“No,” Equius answered immediately, flatly. “...and yes,” he added after a moment, softer. “Our relationship was. Complicated.”

Terezi rubbed a hand up under her glasses with a bitter laugh. “Wasn’t everyone’s?”

“I suppose. She was a detestable troll who never tried to better herself, refused responsibility for her actions, and never once felt remorse towards those she hurt.”

Terezi’s grip tightened around her tea. He was right.

“But… she was my neighbor. It would be difficult to feel _nothing_ for the woman I’ve spent most of my life at the side of.”

Terezi nodded, her burned eyes staring at the tea in her hands.

“All of the logs with her in them are gone.”

“Ah.”

They really didn’t know how to talk to each other. They were both “that friend of Vriska, Sollux, and Nepeta’s” in the mind of the other.

“I miss her,” Terezi told the only person left who could have even a shadow of an understanding. 

“I know,” he told her, as she started to cry.


	4. Chapter 4

CA: i said the name _wwasn’t_ familiar

CA: i havve no idea wwho that person is

_______________

GA: I Told You Last Time

GA: I’ve Never Met Them

_______________

Trees grew up, and did not heal. Why, then, was this tree missing half a carving? Even if trees did start to magically heal after Vriska’s death, two perigees wouldn’t be enough, and it wouldn’t heal in such clean slices.

Where GC <3< AG had once been carved into the bark of _their_ tree, _their_ spot, only GC remained. She took a picture and sent it to the only person she could.

GC: 3QU1US 1TS GON3

CT: D--> What

GC: 1T US3D TO S4Y GC <3< 4G

GC: NOW 1TS JUST

CT: D--> Ah

GC: GC

CT: D--> Pyrope

GC: >:?

CT: D--> I think

CT: D--> And please refrain from being angry at me

CT: D--> It might behoof you to try and let Vriska go

GC: YOU M34N FORG3T 4BOUT H3R TOO

CT: D--> No.

GC: 3QU1US

CT: D--> If you were going to forget her you would have by now

GC: SH3 W4S MY K1SM3S1S

CT: D--> I am merely suggesting you attempt to move on towards greener pastures

GC: SH3 W4S MY _B3ST FR13ND_

CT: D--> Pyrope

GC: 1 LOV3D H3R

CT: D--> She’s dead

GC: 1 _H4T3D_ H3R

CT: D--> And for whatever reason

GC: 1 H4T3D H3R W1TH MY WHOL3 BLOOD PUSH3R

CT: D--> She’s gone

GC: DON’T YOU TH1NK 1 KNOW TH4T

CT: D--> She’s gone, Terezi

CT: D--> Let her go


	5. Chapter 5

Four perigees.

“Equius,” Terezi said into the shaky phone receptor, “please come over.”

_______________

Equius found her on all fours, surrounded by scattered photographs and an open husktop with a photo-viewing program on its screen. “She’s gone.”

“I’m assuming we are still discussing Vriska?”

“No, you don’t- Listen! She’s gone! Every picture I’ve ever taken with her, she’s gone from all of them. And not like in movies where she just fades out- the entire photograph gets rearranged, look!”

Terezi plucked a picture from the mess on her floor and shoved it into Equius’s face.

“This used to be a picture of the two of us with our arms around each other making a spade in the middle with our other hands. Now it’s me, dead center of the frame, taking a selfie!”

“Pyrope-”

“I’m _not_ crazy!”

“I believe you,” Equius said, very gently placing his hands on her shoulders and nudging her back so she was not quite so immersed in his personal space.

“And-” Terezi took a deep breath, gripping his wrists, the photo crumpling under her fingers, “-I’m starting to forget what she looked like. One of her horns was like Kanaya’s, her hair was like Feferi’s, and she wore shoes like mine, but I can’t- other details are all-”

Terezi turned away from Equius, back on the array of images on her floor, none of them able to give her what she searched for.

“...She had a robotic arm,” Equius said, quiet, a soft contrast to Terezi’s manic noise.

She turned back to him, and smelled the pile of metal in his hands.

“I made it for her. I made a remote for it, too, this.”

“That doesn’t smell like a remote.”

“It isn’t, anymore. I didn’t break it, and I certainly did not take it apart, and yet, all that remains of the remote is a bunch of spare parts.”

Equius allowed Terezi to take the pieces of assorted scrap metal from his hands, sniffing it over.

“I’m forgetting her appearance, too. I remember she wore an eyepatch.”

Did she? Terezi didn’t know. 

A deep breath. Then another.

“Do you want to sit down?”

Equius nodded and took a seat on her loungeplank, and Terezi sat on the opposite end, dumping the random metal pieces and crumpled photo between them. Equius took the bolts and wires into his sylladex, watching Terezi, staring.

“Why are we the only ones that remember?” Terezi asked, frustrated and feeling so small in the face of a mystery she was in no way capable of solving.

“I think perhaps we are not meant to,” Equius said. Terezi laughed bitterly, a pale shade of her normally robust cackle.

“Certainly seems that way.”

“I’ve been thinking-”

“Who, you?”

Equius went silent, staring at her with thinly pressed lips.

“Sorry, sorry, I was trying to make a joke.”

“Ah- my apologies. I didn’t catch that.”

“It’s okay. I know you’re not,” Terezi waved a hand back and forth between them, “good at this.”

Equius nodded. “I’ve been thinking about how the traces of Vriska are fading from reality. Specifically prompted by the disappearance of her lusus. I think it is perhaps her own special damnation.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember what she always wanted, more than anything else in all Alternia?”

“...To be the center of attention,” Terezi said with broken fondness, her brain feeling like maybe she knew which track Equius was on, now.

“And now she is dead, and forgotten, with no legacy left in this world, and only one person who is mourning her.”

“Don’t you miss her?”

Equius was silent for a long, long moment. Then he picked up the crumpled photo of just-Terezi and flattened it out, staring at it.

“You have less bruises now, than you did then,” Equius commented idly, not answering Terezi’s question.

“We were kismesises,” Terezi said, “we’re supposed to roughhouse.”

“Mm,” Equius hummed noncommittally. “Do you need help cleaning your hive?”


	6. Chapter 6

CT: D--> Nepeta

AC: :33< *ac tumbles in with a purrticularly adorable roll and then wiggles her belly invitingly at her meowrail, hoping that he’ll pet her*

AC: :33< “hello!” ac calls happily to her best furriend

CT: D--> Do you think it is possible for a someone to auspisticize between a person and a ghost?

AC: :OO< ?????????

CT: D--> Or perhaps

CT: D--> A person and their own memories of someone


	7. Chapter 7

8 perigees. 

Her hive was gone.

There was just an empty riverbed there now, all the webbing, all the stones and wood and bricks, all the treasure and blood and _everything,_ it was all gone.

Equius walked out of his hive and offered her the snuggleplane he’d apparently gone inside to fetch.

“It’s cold season,” he said, “and we’re cold blooded.”

She took the blanket from him and wrapped it around herself, staring down at the gaping chasm she’d spent so much of her pupahood inside. To think that she’d be sitting up here, staring down at it, _empty._

“You can see it from the window,” he stated. She didn’t respond. “You should come inside.”

“I’m going to go insane, Equius,” she told him quietly. “It’s just- it’s just _gone.”_

He sat next to her, staring at her intensely in a way she found she didn’t really mind anymore. They didn’t see each other often, just every now and then, but he was the only person she could talk to about this. Sollux was a wonderful moirail, but he didn’t remember Vriska. He couldn’t understand this. Feferi was everything Terezi could have ever wanted in a matesprit, but she couldn’t seek comfort for this, this specifically, from her.

“I’m going to lose my mind,” she said, pressing her hands underneath her glasses, against her burned out eyes.

“You will not,” Equius said honestly. He was hard and blunt all over, but she knew this- now- to be meant as a reassurance.

“I can’t keep living like this,” Terezi said, curling under the blanket. Equius nodded. “She wasn’t even a good person.”

“She was not.”

“How much do you still remember about her?”

“She was blue. She was cruel. She frightened me. I hated her and pitied her and in no way were those feelings romantic. She enjoyed it when other people were smaller than she was, or hurting, and did anything she could to make herself big. She was proud.”

Terezi bit back tears. 

“How much do you remember?” Equius asked.

“She was proud,” Terezi started, clawing at her leaking eyes. “She always had to be the center of attention, always. She was cunning and manipulative and rowdy and _incredible._ I hated her. I hated her, I hated her, I hated her so much, I hated her so much Equius I _hated_ her I _despised_ her I _loathed_ her fucking guts!”

She dug her palms into her eyes, trying to staunch the tears, trying to cut off her crying, the blanket slipping loosely off her shoulders as she angled her face skywards, trying so hard to just make it all _stop._

“I can’t keep living like this,” she repeated, “I can’t, I can’t keep doing this. She wasn’t a good person and sometimes I wonder if she even ever really cared about me. Genuinely. I can’t keep-” Terezi hiccupped, her treacherous body hellbent on tears. _”I can’t!”_

“That’s okay,” Equius told her gently, the wind tossing his hair as they both sat over the edge of an abyss, “you are allowed to move on.”

Terezi howled, her anguish echoing against the rock faces, out into the wind and the night and the unfeeling stars. She wept at the injustice of it all, at how much she _missed_ someone who might never even have truly loved her, at the fact that there was nothing left of her now and Terezi couldn’t understand why. She wept until Equius had to carry her sleeping body inside. She wept until she was resolved to finally let go.


	8. Chapter 8

When the world woke the next evening, not a single soul in Alternia remembered a girl named Vriska.


End file.
